3D printing: a new standard of living or just a hype?

Imagine visiting your sister and you accidently break her Eiffel tower souvenir she got a long time ago from her summer love. She’s angry at you! You want to give her a new one, but you can’t just fly back to Paris to get a cheap souvenir… Well, this might not be a problem anymore. It is now possible to find the 3D printing files for that item and print it with your new high tech 3D printer! Voila, a new Eiffel tower souvenir, identical to the one your sister had.

Personally I have no idea what to think of this new technology and if (and how) we will use this in the future. Will it be a temporary hype? Printing random objects for fun and just because we can do it? Or will we actually replace some basic objects by printing it ourselves instead of buying it in the stores?

What do you think the future of 3D printing will be?

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

3 responses to “3D printing: a new standard of living or just a hype?”

Nice article! I think the technology is quite far at the moment. We have seen all sorts of things being printed with a 3D printer, from a pencil to a car and the possibilities are unimaginable. At the moment these prints are primarily done by companies and not by costumers but with prices dropping and the technology improving fast it’s just a matter of time that we print those things out ourselves. Imagine being hungry and you aren’t in the mood to go shopping. What do you do? You just print your food.. It’s all possible. I also think that having a printer like that at home will make people more creative because they can be designers themselves. So I personally think that 3D printing will get huge and within 10 years every one of us has one at home. But these technologies also have downsides and with the rise of 3D printing security risks also become higher as you mentioned with the printer being able to print a gun. Not only that, there is a possibility to also print out drugs. This could be beneficial if it only were used by researchers for medical purposes but if the printer is being used to print out drug for own consummation that really could be a threat for public health. Every technology comes with positive things and also has negative downsides and we are not sure yet how negative the downsides will be. So we could only wait and see what happens. With great power comes great responsibility they say and hopefully everyone that has access to this technology uses this wisely and only to improve their quality of life. And when in need of another 3D printer we just hit the print button and there you go we have another printer at home.

Featured Posts

Grocery shopping is a time-consuming activity, especially in todays frantic world where time is of essence to most people. The rise of both partners in a household having stable jobs minimises the time available to do groceries even further. According to market research by US company Time Institute, the average customer spends 41 minutes in […]

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Airbnb, Amazon & co. We use online platforms and services all the time. Some more frequent than others. Some for social purposes, others for commercial ones. But what all these platforms have in common: they collect user data. (And we produce a lot of it, up to 2.5 quintillion bytes per day!) […]

Along with tackling the premise of information asymmetry in its online web shop, L’Oréal has acted upon a very strategic and innovative way of testing make up with the use of an app that integrates augmented reality within its system. Instead of going to crowded drugstores, being frustrated by the fact that trial makeup is […]